“Sense visited Congress today, when the constitutional amendment drive by anti-gay marriage activists in the Senate was derailed by a bipartisan host of their more principled colleagues. Conservative Republicans, although publicly backed by President Bush, failed to muster enough support to end debate and force a vote on the innocuously named Federal Marriage Amendment.

The broad rejection may signal that American society has simply progressed too far to concretize discrimination against queer couples among the nation’s guiding principles. But another, perhaps more crucial, test to that progress looms just around the corner.

In Massachusetts — the only state so far where same-sex couples may legally marry — legislators are gearing up for a constitutional battle of their own…” [more] (Village Voice)

Do they Really Help Solve Crimes? “The subject is nothing if not controversial. On one television show an experienced detective insists that no psychic has ever helped his department solve a crime, while another broadcast features an equally experienced investigator who maintains that psychics are an occasionally valuable resource, citing examples from his own solved cases. Who is right? Is it a matter of science versus mysticism as some assert, or an issue of having an open mind as opposed to a closed one as others claims? Let’s look at the evidence.” (CSICOP)

“The owners of the popular Kazaa file-swapping software have withstood assaults from the record industry for years, but now they’re facing a new enemy that may be even harder to fight: competition. …Having traded billions of files over Kazaa, file swappers are trading in the popular peer-to-peer client for a new generation of software, throwing a monkey wrench into Sharman’s plans to turn its network into a legal and profitable media distribution channel. It’s not clear how many people have jumped ship so far, but one recent study estimated that the service lost some 5 million users between November 2003 and February.

Signs of migration underscore the sometimes evanescent success of media rebels facing attacks from record labels and movie studios. Not only has Sharman itself been hit with lawsuits seeking to shut it down; thousands of its customers have been charged with civil copyright infringement violations, and media companies have flooded its network with fake files to interfere with file-swapping activities.” (CNET News)